THE WHALLEY WILL FRAUDS. Conviction of the Forgers.—Story of the Case. (From Our Own Correspondent.)

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 87, 31 January 1885, Page 5

THE WHALLEY WILL FRAUDS. Conviction of the Forgers.— Story of the Case. (From Our Own Correspondent.)

London, Dec. 4. One of the most extraordinary cases of willforgery which have over been investigated in a court of justice terminated on Tuesday afternoon last, after occupying Mr Justice Stephen and a special jury for seven continuous days. About a year ago, when the forgery of Mr Whalley's will was first sus. pected and the civil case to inspect the spurious document tried, I sent you a '■, resume of the story as at that time accepted. Since^ that time, however, many additional particulars have come to light so that it will now be necessary to retell tho talo in the shape it was laid before the jury. — The three men who were on trial for the crime of forging or uttering the will of the late Mr James Whalley, of Leominster, were respectively named Thomas, Nash, and Gunnell, the last of w homhasbeen acquitted. As regards Thomas, his career has been a eomewhat chequered one. Before tho year ISBO we find him acting in the capacity of a railway porter ; but after that^ date he was promoted to the municipal office of sub-inspector of nuisances at Leominster, He owed this appointment, it was stated, to the influence of Mr Gunnell. The prisoner Thomas, ex-railway porter and nuisance inspector, was tho person at whose humble home old Mr Whalley chose to pass the end of his days, living a decidedly frugal, not to gay miserly, existence. Mr Whalley had two natural children living, called Emma and Henry Whalley Priestman, whom he seems to have educated and lived with until about the year 1577, when he quarrelled with his daughter, and left her and her brother at Hereford, while he himself went off to live at Leominster, at Thomas's cottage. In May, ISSI, the eccentric old gentleman died, leaving a fortune of fifty or sixty thousand pounds. It has now been proved to the satisfaction of the jury that Mr Whalley's will, in which he left almost the whole of his property to his son, was done away with, and that Thomas and Nash between them concocted a forged will, in which the bulk of the fortune was bequeathed to Thomas himself, while the son was cut off with tho comparatively small sum of five thousand pounds. Sir Farrer Herschell, tf.e SolicitorGeneral, who prosecuted in the case, argued that forget y of will was worse than any other kind of forgery, because the person whose signature was simulated was incapable of coming back to life in order to explain what his intentions really Mere. Nobody will be inclined to differ from this opinion : but the forging of Mr Whalley's final instructions was even more heinous than such a crime must necessarily be. The trickery practised made Mr Whalley himself participate in the forgery without knowing it. Thomas, the leading rogue in the business, must have prepared his plans carefully, and adopted what must be described as a very ingenious stratagem indeed in order to pass the money into his own pocket, and out of that of young Henry Whalley Priestman. Some time in March, ISSI, Mr Whalley being ill, Thomas wrote a letter at his dictation addressed to his son. The eccentric old mi-:er was unable to do more than sign his name at the foot, and this ho did in ink, while the body of the letter, written by Thomas, was in pencil. The letter contained a complaint to his son that the latter did not come over and see his father : but young Whalley Priestman never received such a communication, and told his father io when the old man wrote aeain to the same effect. It was supposed that the letter had been "lost in transmission ;'' but it seems now perfectly (evident that it was never despatched at all. The artful trick devised by the ingenious brain of Thomas was as follows. If he could only get a blank sheet of paper with Mr Whalley's signature at the bottom, he would have the main ingredients of a concocted \\ ill. It wa3 for thi? reason that he must have written the dictated letter in pencil. When Mr Whalley's signature was appended, all that remained to do was to era«e the pencilled letter, and insert such provi=;iuns as commended themselvesto the mind of the forger. But yet another formality, happily, demanded by the law had to be attended to. Witnesses to the signing of Mr Whalley's name had to be procured. The' two signatories to the will which the jnry have declared to be forged were Ka«h— the man now sentenced with Thomas to fifteen years' penal servitude —and Recce, who has escaped punishment by turning Queen's evidence against the other two. It is quite obvious that both these persons must have signed the document, well knowing at the time that they were doing something which was illegal ; and the subsequent history of the case shows that bribed them to act as his accomplices by lavish promises of the fhare which they would obtain out of Mr Whalley's fortune. The proceedings after the death of the testator are of rather a complicated nature, and it is not in the least degree necessary to enter into the details of how the crime was first suspected and finally brought home to the prisoners. What is retnakable is that so long a time should have elapsed before the will, written on the sheet of blue paper, was discovered to be a forgery. It was not until a year or two afterwards that anybody subjected that will to any searching examination ; but when; the document lying in the Registry Wills" at Hereford was critically investigated, there were found obvious traces of the erased pencilled letter written by old Mr Whalley to his eon, which letter, until that time, was supposed to be lost in the Post-office. Nothing, probably, could have exceeded the astonishment of the son when Thomas coolly read out to him the contents of the forged will. A month before, Mr Whalley nad called him to the bedside and told him how he intended to leave him all his property, with Uie exception of trifling amounts to be paid to his executors, and ft Bumoi lour hundred pounds to be devoted to rebuilding Leominster Parish Church. The true will was on blue paper ; therefore the surprise was all the greater when Thomas's will appeared written on white paper. The only way in which the phenomenon could be explained was by (supposing that Mr Whalley had seen reason to alter his intentions. That he had really, however, done nothing of the kind was shown in a very curious way at the trial. The forged will was dated at the end of March. By this will the testator was made to bequeath nearly everything to Thomas, and hardly anything to Whalley Priestman. Yet just thirteen days before that date he had written a letter to some Yorkshire bankers asking them to look out for a Stock Exchange partnership for hi 3 son, adding that he would be willing to give ten thousand pounds to help him into a good position. This certainly doss not seem consistent on the part of a man who intended to leave his son only five thousand pounds, A fortnight after the date of the forged document he wrote to his stockbrokers, suggesting to them that certain securities, to the value of ten thousand

pounds, should be registered in the name of the same son. Nevertheless, this was the youth whom he was supposed aud alleged to have virtually disinherited a fortnight beiore. It is certainly a matter for some astonishment that, with these proofs to show the unreality of the forged will, and with young Whalley Priestman's own evidence as to what was in his father's will which he had seen, the prisoner Thomas was allowed so long to enjoy tho status of the man legally in possession. An action which was brought by the next of -kin to set aside the will was compromised on the terms that Thomas, instead of obtaining the whole fortune, should have only seventeen thousand pounds. It was then that Thomas appears to have considered his position so safe that he could act with imprudence. He threw Nash and Keece over, and refused to keep his promises to them. Moreover, he seems to have been insane enough to wave a piece of blue paper in the air as tho son was passing his window, which paper is imagined to be the true and lost will. However this may bo, it is satisfactory that the question between the white and the blue wills is now set at rest.